The week in wildlife - in pictures

The week in wildlife - in pictures

The world's smallest frog, a 'walking' lungfish and Christmas gifts for wildlife lovers - the pick of this week's images from the natural world

Friday 16 December 2011 08.33 EST
First published on Friday 16 December 2011 08.33 EST

Flamingos fly over a heron at a wetland reserve in Celestun in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. With the world's population of wild flamingos under threat from overdevelopment and illegal trade on the black market, the wetland reserve is thriving with thousands of the pink-feathered creatures in search of an ideal winter habitat. According to the Caribbean Flamingo Conservation Programme, the estimated 45,000 flamingos that call Mexico's Yucatan state home are an integral part of the travelling bird's regional metapopulation that stretches as far as the Caribbean islands

An orchid newly identified after being collected by a plant hunter and handed to experts at Kew Botanical Gardens in London. The six-country
Mekong River region is so biologically rich that an average of one new species is discovered there every other day, the WWF said. A snub-nosed, Elvis-coiffed monkey, a self-cloning, all-female lizard and five carnivorous plants are among the 208 new species discovered by scientists last year

Romanians load a cart with sand from the Danube River bed exposed by the extreme low water levels following a long period of drought in Calarasi, southern Romania. The waters of the Danube are so low that dozens of cargo ships are stuck, stranded in ghostly fog or wedged into sand banks on what is normally one of eastern Europe's busiest transport routes. Water levels are at warning levels in Romania's hydroelectric power plants and a further decrease would affect the operation of the country's only nuclear electric plant in Cernavoda

Thousands of badgers will be shot in England from autumn 2012 in an attempt to reduce the numbers of cattle slaughtered after contracting bovine tuberculosis, the environment secretary announced on Wednesday

Guillem Colomar, 70, hunts for thrushes with a traditional net during hunting season near the village of Alaro on the Spanish island of Mallorca. Colomar hunts thrushes traditionally during the autumn and winter months, when it is allowed. He hides and waits in bushes in the morning, lifting up his net when thrushes fly his way to trap them

A hippopotamus swims in the pool during a wintery morning, in New Delhi zoo, India. Zoo authorities plan to introduce special diets for the animals during the winter season and plan to keep water bodies warm for animals that stay in water, such as hippopotamuses and swans

Rosa, a five-year-old female bear, looks out from a cage in the forecourt of a petrol station in Lityn, Ukraine. The Vier Pfoten (Four Paws) Animal Welfare Foundation started a bear rescue project together with the Ukrainian Ministry of Environment Natural Resources and the rehabilitation bears centre in Synvyr. According to the Vier Pfoten, unofficial statistics count more than 100 bears kept in captivity by private owners in restaurants, hotels and petrol stations as a tourist attraction. They are known as 'vodka bears', as the customers give them alcohol drinks for fun

A new report released by Sumatra-based NGO coalition,
Eyes on the Forest, estimates that Asia Pulp & Paper, part of the Sinar Mas Group, has pulped more than 2m hectares of Indonesia's tropical forests since it started paper production there in 1984

An African lungfish. A tiny step for the humble lungfish could represent a major leap in the evolution of life, research has shown. Scientists have confirmed that the strange fish, which has lungs and breathes air, can use its scrawny limbs to 'walk'

A pregnant six-year-old female and her nine-year-old bull companion were drugged and de-horned by poachers in South Africa. The rhinos were darted with an overdose of a morphine derivative, known as M99, before having their horns hacked off with pangas or machetes. Besides losing the horns, the female is likely to lose her unborn calf as a result of the ordeal

Red-breasted robins may be an essential part of Christmas, but their distinctive plumage has far greater significance for the birds themselves, a study has shown. The red breast varies in size and colouration with age and sex, suggesting it may communicate information about its owner, scientists believe

Two new species of frog - each smaller than an M&M - have been discovered in Papua New Guinea,
a new study says.
Paedophryne dekot - dekot meaning 'very small' in the local Daga language - is about 8.5 to 9 millimetres long. The bumpy-skinned
P. verrucosa, meaning 'full of warts' in Latin, is an average of 8.8-9.3mm in length. The previous tiny titleholders, also frogs in the Paedophyrne genus, were about 10mm long

Sharks for sale at the traditional fish market in Lampulo, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Sharks are still captured for their fins to be sold to several Asian countries such as China and Singapore as a soup ingredient. Around the world, the movement to ban the shark fin trade has gained significant momentum

A prolific and serial stealer of rare wild birds' eggs has been handed a fourth jail sentence for his activities after he
admitted possessing eggs from such species as the osprey and golden eagle. Matthew Gonshaw, 49, from Bow, east London, was described by prosecutors as one of the UK's most active and persistent egg thieves, whose targeting of osprey and golden eagle nests was 'unprecedented'. He was found with almost 700 wild bird eggs at his home